In the dead of the night
by jhalya
Summary: Because she's not the special one, he is. A pretend princess to her king.


_**- Because she's not the special one, he is. A pretend princess to her king - **_

**A/N: Now this is an odd piece. It stems from a vision of mine in which Rukia is much more forward than Ichigo and Ichigo is much more of a monster. And Byakuya doesn't come off too rosy either. Set some time in the future, just after the Fullbring arc and ignores the current Quincy rebellion story line.**

**So, enjoy and beware the slight – very slight - OOC-ness.**

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It's quiet in the sprawling Kuchiki mansion and Rukia needs the closeness. She knows her way in the dark not because she's memorized the layout of the house barely a week after she moved in, all those years ago, in an attempt to escape the condescending looks of the many _refined _servants that seemed to pop out _everywhere_, but because she'll always know where Ichigo is. It's late and even if the servants haven't gone to bed yet, they are busy cleaning up after the latest Kuchiki house-party – though party is too lax a word for the gathering of nobles that has just graced the Kuchiki premises– so the coast is clear. In any case, Ichigo's maddeningly frightening reiatsu would have chased them away and Rukia almost – _almost _ – resents having missed such a sight.

As it is, Rukia feels she can almost glide over his overflowing reiatsu, it's so thick, like on one of those crazy _human_ waterslides, that had left her breathless, dripping wet and a little terrified the first time she tried it. Dying in a fake body would have topped the list of her unusual experiences in the _Living World _, but, luckily, Ichigo was there to pull her to the surface – and laugh at her expense, she remembers fondly. She'd sported a bigger bruise than he did for two days straight after she'd bashed him a good one for being such a bully – such a _big, tall, obnoxious_ bully – but it'd been the most fun she had had in as long as she could at that time remember. She had made Ichigo promise they'd go to the amusement park again. He had agreed suspiciously fast then and it wasn't until later that she found out in what kind of trap she had fallen: he agreed only if she promised to show him how she had fun in _Soul Society _in return. So, she did. _Foolishly, _Rukia admonishes herself not for the first time, before she halts in front of his wide open shoji doors and his broad – sulking – back to her is obscuring the light of the heavy round moon in the sky.

Her brother had been generous. He gave the brash youth housed under his roof one of the best rooms in the mansion, complete with en-suite veranda overlooking a serenely quiet corner of the vast Kuchiki gardens. But Rukia knows her brother. Byakuya can be terribly calculating. And even though he holds Ichigo in higher respects than anyone could possibly imagine given the often irreverent interactions between the two men, Kuchiki Byakuya can also be incredibly cruel. Ichigo would argue that tonight was nothing more than a gruesome masquerade orchestrated by Byakuya with the sole interest of parading off the young Kuchiki heiress in front of the hungry eyes of Soul Society's finest and _noblest._ He'd argue and argue it to hell and back and leave a bloody trail on his way. There is darkness in him that doesn't do subtlety well and Rukia sometimes thinks that she trains so hard just so he'd never have to tap into that dark part of him that is so often triggered by his unquenchable need to protect.

But after tonight's events, Rukia can only commend him on his attempts at self restraint and thank him for his thoughtfulness – he did it so she wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the ravenous Kuchiki clan. Ichigo is a good kid, he can play polite and sometimes mean it too. But she hasn't thanked him yet, not in words and not in actions . She hasn't even looked at him properly all evening. Why? Because he's not a boy anymore, a child that needs to be told how to behave in the grown-up world when facing important grown-up problems. Why? Because he's a man, and a handsome one at that, and one that tonight had looked – from the little she saw of him while inconspicuously glancing his way and hoping the hand holding the sake cup wouldn't…_tremble_ – tall and serious and devastatingly mad. And finally, because she knew it wasn't _her_ Byakuya was so carelessly showing off. If Ichigo was busy looking at her all night long, she'd been fuming at the idiots looking at him, like he was on some sort of a freak show – the kid with a foot in both worlds and enough power to reduce them all to nothingness, with but a flick of his sword. Yeah, she'd been pissed.

Now, however, Rukia is eerily calm. Byakuya was thinking only of her happiness and he knew well where it lay. Perhaps better than she did herself. Tonight had been a sharp, curt nod of agreement and a dangerous push that had landed her in Ichigo's chambers well into the dead of the night. Rukia is feeling quite reckless all of a sudden.

It would've been hard to sneak up on Ichigo, but she keeps her steps soft nevertheless. The simple unadorned yukata she is wearing – so unlike the intricate dress she had worn earlier – flutters against her skin with a wayward breeze and the silk feels cold. She's always hated seeing Ichigo against the backdrop of a luminescent moon. It makes him look too much like a ghost. Ichigo is Rukia's favourite research topic and she knows more about _the hollow _ than any of their friends with the exception of possibly Urahara but the monster within is what she thinks she sees when Ichigo catches the light of the moon. Right now, she wishes he'd turn to her, but then she'd loose her nerve. He's probably expecting a talk, a typical Rukia-to-Ichigo interaction in which nothing is really said, but much is understood after an appropriate dose of verbal and physical violence. Violence is not what she's here to do to him tonight.

Rukia is a warrior at heart, but her touch is gentle and gods help her, how she loves everything about Ichigo, from his long legs, which are now folded uncomfortably underneath him, to his long arms, strong hands and elegant fingers - so tightly clenched in his lap - to his neck, stiff and stubborn and facing away from her, to his bright hair and everything in between. She wishes he'd give her his mouth, because she needs it and now they're not so awkward about their closeness anymore. Ichigo is still guarded with his kisses though, as if eventually she'd come to resent them. This should make her mad. Instead it drives her wild.

He holds no bars whenever he kisses her. Everything is there, every part of who he is, the good and the bad and the god-_awful_, and it's like living off concentrated love and Rukia is delirious with it. She can count on one hand the number of kisses they have shared so far and she figures herself a candidate for deprivation. The first time it happened, he looked ready to commit seppuku or even more horribly – _apologize_. But she launched them into their very first second kiss to save him the embarrassment. They had been bickering about one thing or another – her recently acquired wounds from a patrol gone roughly bad – when things took a turn for the serious. Suddenly, Rukia realized that Ichigo wasn't being loud and angry as he usually was, but that he was truly upset over the way she chose to run her squad as vice-captain. "_You reckless fool!_" Funny words coming out of Ichigo's mouth, but then she accused him of being a hypocrite and when will he trust her and before they knew it they were hurling insults at each other that none of them actually meant. All until something snapped in Ichigo just when Rukia was in his face and then he was _there_, hungry lips, velvet tongue and punishing teeth. Her first instinct was to strike back or run, an age old fight or flight response that was rendered useless by Ichigo's quickly escalating reiatsu. She felt numb, paralyzed to the spot and yet she hadn't withdrawn from the kiss. Not that she physically could have done it, but when Ichigo's taste and overpowering scent, mixed with his swirling aura, started to sink in, she kissed him back just as fiercely.

That had been the proverbial bucket of cold water, Rukia remembers sheepishly as she kneels behind him, fingers trailing fleetingly across his back. He'd been so terrified then, his face stricken with guilt and shame, his eyes bright with lust and regret and maybe just a bit of fear. Ichigo had always feared for her. He couldn't help it and she knew it. Didn't like it, but knew it was as much a part of him as his orange hair or deranged inner Hollow.

It was what had made him so angry tonight. The fear that she was not taking proper care of herself, that because of her self-sacrificing nature, she was playing into the clan's power struggle without so much as a nod towards Ichigo's delicate sensibilities. Rukia smiles at her train of thought and it leaves an imprint on Ichigo's bristly spine. Her lips tingle with tiny sparks of reiatsu.

"Shouldn't the Kuchiki _princess_ be in her own room? What would your brother say if he saw like this?"

Ichigo is never callous like this, but she forgives him because he's not very convincing. He'd cut off his right hand before hurting her in any way.

"Don't you want me here?" Her arms snake around his middle, fingers gently threading through his own.

"_Nobody _wants you here…" but he squeezes back her hands nonetheless.

Unashamed, Rukia drags her tongue over the bit of shoulder his sleeping yukata reveals. She likes the taste of his skin, a fragrance so rich and tangy she loses herself in the feel of it, and he needs the touch. Both of them have a rather wide personal space bubble, but no barriers could work between them. It's a lesson Rukia struggles to teach Ichigo every day.

"Lucky for me I care not for this _nobody_ person…"

She almost reaches for his jaw line when he abruptly stands up and walks away. When he turns to her, she's shocked to see how rigid his face is, how hard the set of his eyes.

"Your brother…" he starts and the snarl on his lips is grim "…he really pulled a number on me tonight."

How right he is, Rukia is saddened, and oh, how wrong.

"That's not wh…"

"No, no, he proved it, Rukia, he proved how far apart our existences truly are!" his voice cracks, but he doesn't raise it. It's like ripping velvet in the dark.

"Seventeen months I spent as a human and I still felt closer to you than I did tonight!"

"That's because you weren't."

The admission takes his breath away and the light in his eyes falters.

Rukia is a warrior at heart and her words are sharp as any blade, the truth in them devastating.

"You don't see it, Ichigo, but we all know it and I above everyone else. You are not _close_ to me. You are so different than anyone, than _anything_ we've ever seen, it's frightening. You _are_ frightening. Especially when you lose control of your reiatsu like that. And this was just a garden party, not a war zone. You were a _king _tonight. They all feared you as much as they revered you."

Ichigo looks as if she slapped him with every word she'd said. Nevertheless, Rukia stands up to go to him. His chest is cold and his heartbeats faint. He is the glass that can easily shatter, not her. It is _his_ existence, outlandish as it is, that is precious to _her_.

"But Ichigo…even so, do I not exist in your heart? Does not a part of me dwell here, just like the man in my heart that is you lives within me?"

He struggles with his words but the sudden hold he has on her is surprisingly telling.

"Then, what does it matter how different our existences are?"

She hates it when she has to inch up on her tip-toes to reach him because he's being stubborn about denying her the kiss.

"Because, one day it will…" He drops his head and hovers over her slightly chapped lips. His reiatsu feels heavy again and briefly, Rukia wonders if she'll survive his love.

"And when it does, I'll be right there, standing next to you…"

_Loving you _is what she doesn't have a chance to say. The contact is electrifying. She's sure somewhere outside the city, a hollow has just been destroyed by Ichigo's pulsating aura. Boneless is how she feels in his arms, her, the brave vice-captain of Squad Thirteen.

And yet never powerless.

He would butcher the whole world for her or worse, turn his back on it. And that's why she keeps strong and him close and deep inside her and doesn't let go.

Because when his night comes, her light will shine the brightest.

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**A/N2: Oh, the dialogue…sorry, guys, I tried…**


End file.
